Three gargantuan legislative challenges -- health care, the environment and the economy -- have converged on Capitol Hill to make this the Summer of Lobbyists, and Heather Podesta, with clients in several interest groups, works gatherings of well-connected friends such as this reception at the Hay-Adams Hotel.
(Linda Davidson - The Washington Post)

So many people just dying to see him, the business guys, the pols, the lobbyists -- lots and lots of lobbyists. They circle Charlie Rangel -- birthday boy, Democrat and, of course, House Ways and Means chairman -- circles like rings on a tree planted in the party room here at Tavern on the Green. Simple math: the more powerful the pol, the more rings on the tree. This is a very thick tree.

Not a problem, though, for Heather Podesta.

"It's like doing the tango!" she says, all smiles yet all business.

The lobbyist tango: She glides right in her red D&G heels and her periwinkle stockings, cutting through the outer rings with a smile here, a kiss-kiss there, a "Great to see you!" or two. Some guy yells out: "The most beautiful woman in the world!" She doesn't blush, and she doesn't linger. She wriggles left, gets blocked, reverses direction, gets blocked again, reverses direction again. She's in.

"Doesn't get any better than that," Podesta says, amused by the surreal nature of the ritual she has mastered. "A kiss from the chairman."

And so it goes, in Heather's World. On this particular muggy night in Central Park, she's electrically caffeinated after taking the red-eye from Las Vegas the night before (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's energy summit) and she'll be turning around and flying west again in a couple of days (Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's donor shindig in Napa wine country). It may be summer recess, but this is not a time to rest. This is a time to go full-bore. This is a time like nothing we've seen for a long, long time.